Wedding Bellas is a photographic project which examines the female desire for
roots and stability. It explores the wish to belong, and acts as a comment
on ageing, migration and marriage, but can be a record of an individual's urge
to hide personal problems, as a human need for dressing up etc...
The project presents brides passionately attached to the objects of their
marriage. That is evident from the photos- women in wedding dresses have a
physical connection with their rooted fellow. Wedding dresses are surrounded by
other wedding iconography, but the images are not a joke - it is a serious
matter - an event of desperation and delusion shot as on a true wedding
ceremony.
These photographs tell the stories of twelve women who refused to leave. Many
were rejected by their partners, their landlords and their employers, but
majority has been rejected by the state; refused a home in this country. The
women show an extraordinary resilience and resourcefulness in the face of
sometimes all of these rejections happening at once. Fantasy provides for them
an escape, so they ground themselves to that which is stable, rooted and
appealing: ’the Queen’s Subjects’ - a lamppost, a tree, a traffic sign - London
landmarks. It is through the medium of text and image, that we disturb and alter
the perception of migrants and refugees in the UK today. Wedding Bellas is
funded by the European Cultural Foundation with women from the Migrants Resource
see
